Life in the hothouse: how a living planet survives climate change

Abstract

The author opens with the recognition that Lovelock’s Gaia concept provides an appropriate framework for understanding climate change. So her overall strategy is clearly based within the metaphorical process. At the same time her forthright position emerges in describing Descartes’ mechanistic philosophy as outdated. Her own approach is to lead the reader on a conceptual journey in search of a clear and holistic understanding of climate. Her own insights into current scientific research are explained and integrated while traveling through the mindscapes of our world perceived as Gaia. Adopting the searching journey as a research model is still relatively new but has demonstrated its value in dealing with complexity. Those who have adopted it see it as a parallel to using a systematic journey of observation to understand complex geographic landscapes. The Palaeo-evidence tells us that the world has passed through regular cycles of climate change, even though the periods of change are more or less tumultuous in character in the short term and scientists have often found themselves disagreeing in trying to interpret the meaning of short term changes. But the real evidence tells us that each cycle is a period of slow global warming within which gales, cyclones and hurricanes re-distribute tropical hot air to cooler latitudes, thus controlling the overall global warming. The impacts of these movements are most marked in their migration from the tropics to formerly temperate climatic zones. Thus, the boundaries of cyclonic zones are respectively moving to the North and South. Lenart draws upon the Gaia metaphor by pointing out that when we experience over-heating, our bodies perspire and we use fans to reduce the impact of the hot atmosphere. In very much the same way, the Gaia world uses cyclones and other storms to move hot air away from the overheated tropics.